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The word “abandonment” often brings up the image of someone having been left behind physically. When we think of children, two of the most obvious forms of abandonment include a child being given up for adoption or a parent leaving or neglecting a child. There are other forms of abandonment that are subtle, but can…

Mental Wellness: A Possibility or an Ideal? According to the Psychology Today website (psychologytoday.com), January is Mental Wellness Month. That seems like an admirable cause to bring awareness to, however, it begs the question, what the heck is mental wellness and is anyone actually mentally well? The World Health Organization defines mental wellness as, “A…

Getting Motivated If you are anything like me your motivation level tends to vacillate from, “I’m super pumped, let’s do this!” to, “Can’t I just lay on the couch one more day?” It is important to understand the things that affect our motivation and how to overcome them. These six factors of motivation will help…

Setting SMART Goals This time of year everyone is talking about their New Year’s resolutions and trying to maintain a New-Year-New-Me attitude. While it is important to set goals for ourselves and to strive to be better with each passing year, we must also know how to maintain our motivation [see our blog on motivation…

Complete Treatment of Adult ADD Look around at the people with whom you work, hang out with, or join on the freeway. About 1 in 20 of those people suffer from attention-deficit disorder. Making careless mistakes, having difficulty sustaining attention, and being easily distracted are three symptoms that can be dangerous on the freeway. As…

Everyday life will be hard for everybody who lives, rich or poor, black, white, Latino, Asian, straight, gay, middle-class. You will experience or know tragedy and hard times. We will cope with illness, tornadoes will hit, we’ll lose jobs, somebody we care about will die. Life, as much as we love the good parts, will…

Panic is severe anxiety with extreme fear that comes on unexpectedly and makes a person feel “out of control.” In the latest copy of the Psychotherapy Net Worker, Dr. Reid Wilson, at the UNC School of Medicine discusses his successful exposure practice and protocol. Counselors at Behavioral Sciences of Alabama have also found this protocol…

Google child discipline and you get a long list of options that provide anything from information on parenting styles (i.e. authoritative, authoritarian, permissive) to DVD programs that claim to transform your children. Day after day I am asked by parents, “how to I get my child to behave?.” As the interview continues I discover…

In the Journal of Addictions & Offender Counseling, Didelot et al. correctly point out that the Internet has an immediate and powerful impact on our relationships, specifically in the way we communicate and the way we socialize. Virtually everybody I see in counseling uses both smartphones and computers to communicate. Patients’ ever present cell phones ring,…

“Physical intimacy is intoxicating like alcohol. It will cloud your judgment, inhibit critical thinking, and make you do things that later you may regret. And the consequences for girls are usually more devastating than for boys.”- unknown author Top 3 things teen girls want/need based on personal interviews with teens include Wanting to be liked…